Vital medical supplies began reaching India on Tuesday as hospitals lacking oxygen and beds turned away COVID-19 patients. The country's death toll due to COVID-19 surpassed the 200,000 mark on Wednesday, said the federal health ministry.

India's COVID-19 tally rose to 17,636,307 on Tuesday with 323,144 new cases recorded in the past 24 hours, said the federal health ministry. This was the sixth consecutive day when over 300,000 cases were registered in a single day.

A shipment from the UK, including 100 ventilators and 95 oxygen concentrators, arrived in the capital New Delhi. France is sending eight large oxygen-generating plants this week while Ireland, Germany and Australia are dispatching oxygen concentrators and ventilators, an Indian foreign ministry official said, underlining the crucial need for oxygen.

The first batch of Chinese oxygen supplies has been sent to India, said Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi during Tuesday's virtual meeting on COVID-19 with foreign ministers from South Asian countries. Noting the outbreak in India, Wang extended sympathy to the Indian people.

Moreover, U.S. President Joe Biden reaffirmed on Tuesday the U.S.'s commitment to helping India by providing therapeutics, rapid diagnostic test kits and ventilators, saying it is the U.S.'s "intention" to send vaccinations to the coronavirus-ravaged country.

The World Health Organization said it was working to deliver 4,000 oxygen concentrators to India, where mass gatherings, more contagious variants of the virus and low vaccination rates have sparked the second major wave of the contagion.

Meanwhile, India's first "Oxygen Express" train pulled into New Delhi, laden with about 70 tonnes of oxygen from an eastern state in the country, but the crisis has not reduced in the city of 20 million people at the epicenter of the world's deadliest wave of infections. 

"The current wave is extremely dangerous and contagious and the hospitals are overloaded," said Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, adding that a large public area in the capital will be converted into a critical care hospital.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday chaired a high-level meeting with top officials to review the ongoing COVID-19 situation in the country. He was briefed about the oxygen availability, medicines and health infrastructure in the country. He instructed the officials to work closely with state governments to start the pressure swing adsorption (PSA) oxygen plants at the earliest.

(With input from Xinhua and Reuters)